WHEN his daughter Betsy died, Fred Thompson, a genial 6ft 6in senator for Tennessee, lost his enthusiasm for the rough and tumble of politics. Shortly afterwards he announced that he would not run for reelection.
Betsy, 38, had helped her father on the campaign trail and they were close. She died in 2002 from an overdose of drugs prescribed to help her through a long battle with depression. There was no suicide note and the medical examiner ruled that it was an accident.
Her brother, Tony Thompson, a Nashville lawyer, told The Sunday Times last week that the family had been devastated by her death. He said: “My sister had struggled for years with an addiction to painkillers but she had been doing really well for some time before she relapsed. Her body couldn’t cope with the medication.”
Fred Thompson said at the time that he would not miss the Senate. “For me, the George Washington example of serving eight years and riding out of town on a horse and never returning has great appeal.” He vowed to keep his hand in politics, teach a bit, write his memoirs and carry on with his part-time acting career.
It dawned on him this year that he could ride back into town as president only when, one by one, the conservative choices for the 2008 Republican ticket revealed their flaws. They seemed out of sync with the party or the country or both. Thompson’s name began to be aired by old friends and party power-brokers and, suddenly, the idea of Fred Thompson for president caught fire.
Thompson, a good ol’ Southern boy with bags of charm to match those under his eyes and chin, is already known to millions as a tough district attorney in the hugely popular TV series Law and Order and has appeared in films such as In the Line of Fire, with Clint Eastwood, and The Hunt for Red October with Sean Connery.
A national poll last week put Thompson, 64, in second place behind Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and three points ahead of Senator John McCain — and he hasn’t even declared yet that he is running or spent a cent on campaigning. It suggests that he has the potential to be frontrunner in the Republican field.
“I never thought about my dad running for president, but once I did it made absolute sense,” said Tony Thompson, 47. “It’s been quite amazing for me to watch this happen to him.”
Five months after his daughter’s death in 2002, Thompson — single for almost 20 years after his divorce from his first wife — killed off his reputation as a play-boy by marrying Jeri Kehn, a glamorous Republican political consultant 25 years his junior. They now have a four-year-old girl and a six-month-old son. They would be the youngest children in the White House since John F Kennedy was president.
“Jeri is terrific and smart. She makes Fred smile and the kids are beautiful,” said Bob Davis, a former Thompson staffer who is chairman of the Tennessee Republican party. “If he runs, he’ll sling them on his shoulders on the campaign trail — and he’s got pretty big shoulders.”
The signs are that Thompson is preparing to enter the race. He has been dining conspicuously on Capitol Hill with leading Republican organisers and will be meeting key congressmen in Washington this week.
The speculation is that he will announce his candidacy in May, when he is scheduled to give a lecture in the heart of Ronald Reagan country in Orange County, California, and will be appearing on Jay Leno’s late-night television show.
Last week Thompson revealed that he had lymphoma but said the cancer had been in remission for almost three years. He added that he did not believe it would affect his life expectancy. Tony Thompson said that it was “almost a badge of honour” to be a cancer survivor, citing the example of Lance Armstrong, the champion cyclist. “Obviously he needed to put the news out there if he’s seriously considering a run to see what the reaction is,” he said.
The clamour for Thompson to run is growing. His acting career has given him name recognition and stature beyond his political record. “When you put him on TV, people say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s who he is’,” said Davis.
He is used to playing gruff, commanding authority figures on film, but the key to his acting success is that he has always played himself. When Thompson starred with Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, he used to joke: “Cruise and I were crossing the street and all these ladies were just screamin’ and hollerin’. Can you believe Cruise used to think they were screaming for him?”
He has plenty of female fans from Law and Order and in Tennessee easily won the vote of blue-collar Reagan democrats and independents when he first ran for the Senate in 1994. Many believe he could demolish Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party frontrunner, in the South and Midwest and prevent Al Gore, the former vice-president and a fellow Tennessean, from entering the race for fear of once again losing his home state. Could he be the dream candidate for Republicans?
There is a fantasy element to the build-up behind Thompson. Suddenly an actor has appeared stage right to lift the spirits of the depressed Republican faithful. He has plenty of foreign policy expertise, having been a member of the Senate intelligence committee during the September 11 attacks, yet was providentially out of office by the time the war in Iraq was launched and thus free to carve his own path.
Bill Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, recently noted that Thompson was being projected as the new Ronald Reagan. He wrote: “Many times I’ve heard conservative friends consider Thompson’s merits (which are real) and then, chuckling, add, ‘The last time we nominated an actor, it didn’t turn out badly’.”
Bob Tuke, former chairman of the Tennessee Democrats, believes Thompson would be a formidable candidate. “He’s a wonderful campaigner who speaks very well and has the kind of voice people like to hear. I think he will bear up pretty well under scrutiny.” He believes the death of Thompson’s daughter will arouse sympathy and will not be used against him.
But a new Reagan? Hardly, said Tuke. “Reagan was a governor and a political icon long before he ran for president, who was adored by the conservative wing of the Republican party. Fred Thompson doesn’t have his experience or potential. We’ll have to see how far he can get by on personality.”
Thompson, the son of a secondhand car dealer, was born in Alabama. He married his first wife, Sarah, at 17 and was still in his teens when Tony was born. Two more children, Daniel and Betsy, followed soon afterwards, while he was a law student.
Tony Thompson remembered how his father worked to put himself through law school in the 1960s. “He worked in a bicycle plant and sold shoes in a department store. It’s quite an American success story. He was the first person in our family to get a college education.”
Bill Kirkland, a university friend who studied law with Thompson, recalled how the family lived in a tiny apartment. “They had this large closet that they made into their baby’s room,” he said.
“He was a very conservative Republican even then. He was a huge supporter of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.”
With his southern conservative roots, Thompson has the necessary credentials to appeal to the right. James Dobson, the influential evangelical Christian leader, almost threw a spanner in the works by remarking, “I don’t think he’s a Christian. That’s my impression”, but has since admitted he may have been mistaken.
According to Kirkland, Thompson grew up in the Church of Christ, a fundamentalist denomination, and his first wife’s family sold church furniture. “He and Sarah used to go to church, but he didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve.”
He described Dobson’s claims as “ludicrous”.
Davis is in no doubt: “The heartland of America will say, ‘I know that guy, I trust that guy, I hope he runs.’ He’s pro-life and believes marriage is between a man and a woman. His voting record speaks for itself. He’s not a flip-flopper.”
Thompson has led something of a charmed political life since he was selected as a young lawyer to serve in the 1970s as chief co-counsel on the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal.
In his rich southern drawl, recorded for posterity, he addressed a killer question to one of Richard Nixon’s assistants: “Mr Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?” The outcome was the damning Nixon tapes.
He fell into a film career by accident after investigating a bribery scandal in Tennessee. The governor had been selling pardons to prisoners until a single mother, Marie Ragghianti, blew the whistle on the affair. The film producers chose Sissy Spacek to play Marie and persuaded Thompson to play himself in the movie Marie.
“It’s still my favourite film,” said Tony Thompson, who added that his father saw acting as a “refreshing change — almost like a vacation” from his political and legal career.
Thompson could once again be falling into a new role — that of president — seemingly by chance. “He’d be the first to tell you opportunities have come his way and he’s taken them. They’ve almost always turned out to be the right decision,” Tony Thompson said.
Is it possible for Fred Thompson to become the accidental president? For Pat Nolan, a Tennessee political analyst, the question is whether the former senator has the “fire in the belly” to run.
“He’s always been a very effective campaigner but has sometimes lacked focus,” he said. Others have described Thompson as endearingly “lazy”, but then so was Reagan.
Tony Thompson dismisses such fears. “If he makes the decision to do the job, he will give 110%.” He believes his father’s political independence gives him a great advantage.
While Thompson and McCain are great friends, the difference between them is that the right is seeking out Thompson while McCain is seeking out the right. The power balance is different.
“He is his own man. He’s always been that way. I don’t think you will see him playing to anybody but the American people,” his son said.
If he runs, it will be the actor and politician’s greatest role yet.
